


NOTHING BETTER TO DO

by Ghost0



Series: The Doom Patrol [4]
Category: DCU (Comics)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:07:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26621878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghost0/pseuds/Ghost0
Summary: It looks like the gang is going to kick some federal butt! But wait, something important might happen at the end...
Series: The Doom Patrol [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1920121
Kudos: 1





	NOTHING BETTER TO DO

“First of all, let me just say thank you for having composure throughout this whole thing.” Cliff said to Flex Mentallo. “You have been really polite and grounded while making sure to not be condescending. You don’t meet a lot of people who still have those qualities anymore, and I respect that. Now, having said that, I just have one little question to ask.”

“Wait! Let me guess.” Bella held up her hand. “It’s going to be some sort of vague question that include the word ‘fuck’ while also putting emphasis on said word, basically asking whoever just spoke to simply repeat what they just said. I mean, we heard what he said.”

Cliff turned his head and stared at Bella. “Can you blame me here? Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they deserve getting a few punches and kicks, but we are talking about a FEDERAL AGENCY! That’s not exactly easy to do you know.”

“I understand your concern.” Flex spoke up. “And your right to raise any questions you have. This is a pretty big favor that I’m asking. While not as well funded as maybe the FBI or CIA, getting away ended with me slipping into a coma. But that was because I only had myself to rely on and I was thrown off guard by being told that…my life is a comic.” Casey looked at Flex closely. He stared down at the ground for a moment, as if he is finally processing the words he has said. Looking back up, he looked at all of them. “Please, if you need a moment to discuss this over, I can go outside and wait. Or I guess I can try and get some information from the other agent. Not torture, just interrogation.” He nodded and walked off the stage. No one tried to speak until they heard the door close behind Flex.

“Are you guys seriously considering this?” Cliff asked them. “We just got to know his name. I think helping someone try and fight the government is something you do when you are about a year into a friendship.”

“I’ll help him.” Bella said. “But I’m mainly doing it so I will feel better about asking him to send me back home.”

“But why? Gotham is literally the worst city to live in. Say what you will about Metropolis, but I think I’ll pass on a city where half the population has been inside a mental institution.”

“Enough!” Casey put herself in between the two. “If what he said about this Bureau of Normalcy is true, then how long before you think they will start coming after us. Two of them literally came to Danny with relative ease! We need to help him.”

Bella nodded and stood up from her chair. “I’ll go see if Mr. Muscles needs an extra hand with questioning our guest. I know how those kinds of guys think.” She walked off the stage. Casey turned back to look at Cliff.

“I know Flex seems like a nice guy. But let me tell you something from a guy who has done these kinds of things before. People can and will die, even if you don’t mean to. Sure, they might deserve it but you don’t exactly get to have a ten-year plan for your life if you go down this road.”

Casey breathed in through her nose and slowly exhaled. She looked at him for a moment, trying to find the right words. “It’s because you have done this before that you should help him. Yea, he has his own experience, but he lived in a reality where he had a writer to make sure he can get out of things OK. But now, you can be that writer for him. We all can. I know what it’s…adjusting to all of this is earth shattering!” Casey got lost in thought. “I struggled a bit when Danny first pulled me out. I hated him for a little while, isolating myself when he finally pushed me into a city. I don’t really have any friends or support. I don’t want him to have those same feelings, where he ends up doing something that ends up harming him or others.” She reached out and put a hand on Cliff’s shoulder. “I don’t think we’ll leave right away, so you have a little time in case you change your mind. Please do.”

Casey got up and jumped down to the ground. She walked up a few steps and pushed open the door. Cliff watched her walk out, bringing his head back to stare at the ground. Left alone on stage, to his own thoughts and memories, trying to figure out what he should do.

******

The agent had his hands tied behind his back, duct tape covering his mouth. Grabbing a chair in Cliff’s room, Flex brought it a few feet in front of him and sat down. Clapping his hands together, he rubbed them for a bit and exhaled deeply. Leaning back, he rubbed his legs and looked down at him. “So, I never really done this before. Normally I would simply be fighting the bad guys and they would end up telling me the information after I defeat them. But I do have some detective skills. Must be when Grant was starting to get a little older and tried to…mix it up a little.” Flex looked downwards at the ground, beginning to feel unsure about himself. He snapped back towards the agent. “Do you want any water or anything before we start? Oh, I guess I should remove this.” He leaned forward and ripped the duct tape off his face. Smacking his lips together, he stared up at the man in the leopard print speedo.

“I don’t know what you want freak, but I’m not telling you anything!”

“All right, let’s calm down.” Flex held up both his hands. “There’s no need to start using words as a derogatory insult or slur.”

“Good thing I came up here.” Flex turned around and saw Bella with crossed arms in the doorway. “Is this what you think an interrogation is?”

Shrugging his shoulders in a sign of confusion and uncertainty, he watched Bella walk over and squat down in front of the agent tied up on the floor. “All right, listen up dipshit. Danny might not have any rats on himself, but I can sense a whole bunch of them not too far away. I can have them here like that!” She snapped her fingers. “Imagine dozens of them, crawling all over your body, nibbling at you until they start to get hungry and aggressive. Their teeth biting through your flesh, blood dripping from your wounds, getting all kinds of infections. I want you to have that burned into your mind, because that is exactly what I plan on doing with you if you don’t tell us exactly what we need. So, are you going to cooperate?”

The agent’s eyes widened and his face turned pale. Flex Mentallo’s mouth hung open in shock as he listened to Bella talk. “Holy Moley!” Bella turned and looked up at the man with only a speedo and black boots. “We aren’t doing any of that!”

“Look Flex, you need to put fear into his heart. That’s the only way they are ever going to do what you need them to do. Isn’t that right?” She turned back to the agent, still pale and with a horrified expression on his face. “OK, he isn’t much of a talker right now, but I guarantee you that this will be enough to get us started.”

Casey walked up to the opening and caught the last little bit of what Bella said. “Let me guess. You two disagree about something.”

“She wants to use rats to bite this fellow!” Flex turned to her.

“I wasn’t actually going to follow through with it!” The agent started to calm down a bit. Noticing that, she turned to him and growled. “I will have them on you faster than you can blink!” He went right back to terrified.

“How about we back off him a bit!” Casey walked forward. Grabbing onto the back of Flex’s chair, she put her other hand on her hip. “Look, all we need to know is where is your base located.” While he still looked scared, there was a glow in his eyes that showed determination to remain quiet. “Come on, just tell us. I mean, I can just use my psychic abilities to read your mind and pull up anything I want from your memories, but I want to do the nice thing and have you offer us the information.”

“Excuse us for just a moment.” Flex stood up and took Casey to the side. Bella stayed squatting, glaring at him and making sure he didn’t try anything while the other two talk. “Why did you just lie to him?” He whispered to Casey, who crossed her arms. “You don’t have that ability. Wait, do you?”

“No – it’s called a bluff!” Casey whispered back, trying to explain. “If he thinks we can do something or we have something, he might be able to simply tell us what we are looking for.” Flex seemed a little uneasy about it, so she tried to reassure him. “Sometimes a little white lie is needed for drastic circumstances. I’m sure that once we turn back around and ask him, he will be telling us everything.” They turned back around and looked down at the agent. Bella stood back up, still glaring at him. The agent, while clearly still scared, looked back up in defiance.

“Go ahead – read my mind, summon your little rodents to chew me up, flex me out of existence!” He snarled. “I believe in what the Bureau stands for and will fight to protect it at all costs! I will never surrender to a comic book character, a psychic, or a rat woman!” This made all three of them take a little pause. Bella because she never actually had rats do anything like what she had described moments ago, Casey because she can’t actually read minds, and Flex because this was just awkward for him in general. But then, a miracle came.

“Got it!” Cliff held up a smartphone as he stepped inside his room. “I figured it would be in D.C. but I borrowed a phone and looked up the address. Did you know that Danny has his own Wi-Fi? I’ve been using a DVD player and watching reruns of ‘Cheers’ and ‘The Addams Family’ when I could have been streaming that shit.” Cliff looked down at the agent then back at the rest of them. “So, how’s it going?”

“Badly.” Bella admitted. “But I guess this means we don’t really need him anymore, right?”

“Well, maybe. Hold on a second here.” He handed the phone to Casey as he moved to sit down on the chair that Flex was using. “Hey there. Name’s Cliff. “Say, your Bureau wouldn’t happen to have any sort of elaborate security system just in case guys like us would try to break in, would they? If you do, we would appreciate it if you can give us some sort of cheat code or whatever. If you do…I’ll give you the best high five you will ever get!” Cliff held up his hand, not fully realizing that both of his were tied up. But there was a curious look on his face as the agent looked up at the robot man.

“Cliff? Are you Cliff Steele?” He asked.

“Yes! You a fan of back when I was a race car driver?” Cliff asked.

“No. But I’ll tell you.” The agent grinned. “The building has no system, no keypads for any room. But we keep all of our most important information in the basement, which is guarded.”

“Thanks. But I wasn’t really expecting you to say anything at all. What’s the catch here?”

“Oh, I just can’t wait for you to finally meet the rest of them.” Was the response given.

“Very cryptic. But also helpful.” Cliff pulled his hand back and punched him across the face. “Hey Danny, would you mind – thank you!” He didn’t even need to finish that sentence. The agent will find himself waking up on a sidewalk outside of Casey’s apartment. Getting back up, he turned around to face Flex. “Hey, sorry about the cold feet. Had some bad shit happen a while ago with something similar. If you still want me to come along, I got nothing better to do. Otherwise I’ll just do some more moping and brooding.”

Flex smiled and stuck out his hand for Cliff. Taking it, he gave the robot man a firm hand shake. “Glad to have you on board. All of you.” He looked at the two girls. “So, the national capital. How long of a drive is that from here?”

“Actually, since Danny did create me, he can just sort of send me and call me back from pretty much anywhere. Call it a father daughter connection.” Casey put her hands in the pockets of her windbreaker. She looked over at Bella. “If you really want to go back to Gotham, I’m sure Flex would understand.”

The young woman looked at Casey in thought, turning to look up at Flex as well. Eventually, she answered. “On second thought, I think it might be best if I let my trail go cold for a while before heading back. Plus, I kind of already promised to go on an adventure involving beating up some feds. Can’t let a good time like that go by.”

Flex nodded. “All right, I guess that makes us a team. It’s time to go off and fight the bad guys!” 

“One more thing!” Cliff walked across the room and grabbed a trench coat and a fedora. “Movies have taught me that a coat and a hat will make anyone unrecognizable. At least, the ones I saw do. Which you might find useful considering that the rest of them might recognize you.”

“Good thinking.” He put on the hat and threw on the coat. Casey asked Danny to send them to D.C. across from the Bureau of Normalcy. And like that, they were no longer on Danny the Street. They were right across the street from the federal agency, standing in front of a Starbucks. Turning around to look at the building, they gathered close to each other.

“That’s it?” Bella asked. “I was expecting something more sinister or more fancy. It’s not even that big of a building.”

“What they lack in presentation, they make up for in ruthlessness.” Flex assured her. “All right, so how exactly do we want to go about this?” They all turned towards Cliff, who blankly stared back.

“Looks like I’m the leader for some reason.”

“You were on a team.” Casey pointed out.

“And they all died.”

“But your still here, which means you were doing something right.” Bella said. “Now come on, tell us what to do.”

“Right, sure. So that kid said the important stuff is in the basement. So Flex and I can go down there and find whatever dirty shit we need to get them shut down. You two…I don’t know, handle all the other floors. Make sure no one goes down to the basement. That’s all I really got.” Cliff said.

“Sounds like a solid plan to me.” Flex responded. The girls nodded in agreement. They turned and started to walk towards the building. Opening the door for everyone, Flex came up in the rear and they looked around the lobby. There were a couple of chairs and a couch, a bunch of stuff to make it look like any other lobby. But the only other person in there was the man behind the front desk, who looked up from the magazine he was reading. 

“Hello there! Anything I can help you with?” The old security guard looked up as the visitors approached his desk.

“Would you mind showing me where the restroom is?” Flex asked. The guard showed him the way, past the elevators. Flex walked with Cliff right behind him. That just left the two girls, unsure on what exactly to do.

“Hey. Um, we were wondering if you could tell us which floor the head of the…Bureau is.” Casey asked the guard.

“Yes!” Bella over enthusiastically said. “We were looking to see if they have any internships open. We’re both, uh, political science majors! Yea, and it’s kind of required. We kind of got a late start in the search and are really looking for anything right now.”

“Well, just between you and me…” He leaned forward a bit to say the next part. “I don’t think you will find any here. I’ve heard that they are probably going to be shut down sooner or later.”

“Really now?” Casey asked, raising an eyebrow. 

The guard nodded his head. “Makes sense if you ask me. I don’t really know what their whole purpose is. I mean we got people flying and using all sorts of advanced tech, nothing is normal! Hell, having all these weird people going around is normal, which is fine with me. But a job is a job, you know?”

“I hear that.” Bella said, nodding her head. “But we figured we would give it a shot anyway. Even not, I’m sure other places might have some open positions sometime soon.”

“True enough. But also doesn’t hurt to ask. They’re on the second floor. No one is on the third floor, but maybe whoever comes in after them might end up renting both floors.”

“Maybe. Thanks so much!” The two of them smiled and Casey waved as they walked past his desk and clicked on the button for the second floor. As they waited in the elevator, Casey had a thought pop in her head. “I just realized that you might actually be recognized. If you broke out of jail and you killed someone before, I’m sure they would have seen your face pop up in at least the news.”

“Please, I doubt it. No offense, but compared to Flex and Danny, I don’t think I’m weird enough for me to pop up on their radar.” Casey shrugged in admittance. “Besides, if they are in danger of being shut down anyway, chances are they have their head buried into paperwork trying to save their jobs.” The elevator dinged and the doors opened. “We can just stick to the walls and keep an eye on all of them.” But as they stepped out, their cover had already been blown.

“Hey, you’re that Ratcatcher girl from Gotham!” A guy pointed to her as he looked up while walking past them. “Your one of the criminals that broke out of prison! Everyone get your weapons and get into positi- “

Casey put one hand out and blasted him with a purple energy beam, pushing him up against a cubicle wall. He fell down to the ground, but Bella made sure he stayed down by punching him a couple of times. Feeling around, she found a gun on him, shrugging and making sure it was loaded. She crouched as Casey got to her side and held a hand up. They heard people moving around and things being pushed to the side and fall to the ground. As they start to see people come towards them, Bella began shooting, moving around and grabbing other guns when she could. Casey sent beam after beam, dodging and getting behind what she could as the two separated and took on the Bureau.

******

While the girls headed upstairs and into a huge battle with multiple opponents, Cliff and Flex went downstairs to come face to face with one suit. He sat in a chair and was reading a book. As they got closer, he noticed them and nervously stood up.

“Stop right there!” He grabbed his phone and made a call, grabbing his gun with the other hand and aiming it at the two. “Helen, I got eyes on two intruders! One is a robot and the other is…” He squinted, not sure how to describe the other person. Flex took off his hat and pulled his coat off. This made his eyes open wide up. “FLEX MENTALLO! I repeat, Flex Mentallo is here! What do you mean that you can’t send anyone down? Are those guns being fired?” Using his focus, Flex stealthy flexed an unseen muscle and put the suit in a giant glass rectangle. Looking around in shock, he banged on the glass and tried to find a way out. 

“I feel like this might be considered inhumane?” Cliff said. “Granted, they are trying to kill us, so maybe not.”

“I put air holes near the top.” Flex pointed upwards so that Cliff could recognize them. “I’ll make sure to let him out after we’re done.”

“Good enough for me.” Cliff said with some pep. Ignoring the yells of the suit, they opened the door and entered what appeared to be the file room. There were rows of cabinets, obviously filled to the brim with files on all sorts of individuals, events, and strange phenomenon that the Bureau of Normalcy would no doubt would like to avoid or get rid of completely. The two walked out and scanned the rows.

“OK, maybe we should narrow down what it is exactly we are looking for.” Cliff said. “I mean, all the important stuff is supposed to be here, but we don’t know what would be the most damaging for them.”

“Halt!” They looked forward to see a black man stare right at them, arms crossed. “I suggest you leave right now!”

“No can do padre.” Cliff told the guy. “We have to tear you down from the inside. You take on Flex Mentallo, you have to deal with Cliff Steele and the gang! We haven’t talked about a name, mainly because we are under the impression we are doing just this one mission, but I think you know what this implies so fuck you!”

“Cliff Steele.” The man walked towards them. “Former professional race car driver that was in an accident and presumed dead. But Dr. Niles Caulder put your brain inside a robotic body and drafted you into his little team known as the Doom Patrol. I assumed you died with the rest of them on your little island mission.”

“Excuse me but who the fuck are you and how the shit do you know all that?” Cliff asked him. Flex crossed his arms and kept his eyes trained on him, prepared for any sudden movements. 

“I am Director Morgan, head of the Bureau of Normalcy. It’s only natural that we should meet someday. Not only were you the only normal member of your little troop, but someone should know the real reason why Niles collected all of you.”

Cliff stared at Morgan, confused at what he was getting at. Grinning at the robot man, he told him the truth that had been hidden from him for all these years. “The Doom Patrol was never a superhero group. Niles created the team with my approval in order to protect the nation from the weird and unnatural.”


End file.
